I spend too long thinking about words.
About what to say, when to say it,
When to get the words out of my head
That choke me, suffocate me,
Put me in desperation,
Sadness, need, greed.
I shove them down my throat and hope
They will keep me going for a while.
I consume my language quick
So I can't move or breathe or see,
Words filling me from tip to toe.
On a vacant breath I will spill into your mouth
My poetry and lust, predate upon
Your silence. Know that this is just
Temporary.
Fleeting.
Almost over.
Almost.

Sticky trappy honey, I am a fly -
Hungry, greedy, drowning in you.
I would like to see you again.
I think about your mouth
More often than I can laugh away.
Your eyes and limbs linger gently
After I leave for the night.
I noticed the slow peel of your eyes
Leaving mine, the reluctance and weight
Of the motion. Is this not in my head?
The touch of your hand brands me,
White hot metal flaring against my wrists.
I think about you when I'm alone,
Can hear your accent tilting
Over the shape of my name.
I stand close to you and look at my feet,
Go home and write about you
Like you're someone else.

Shifting panes,
I drop the channels,
We are an island.
Stranded, docked horizons.
I think I was once better
than I am now.
You asked me where I was
but I don't remember,
but I don't,
except for the body somewhere between
my hands and my shoulders.
I wish I was being eaten alive,
teeth on my shoulders again as they were,
as they were a hundred times before.
I think about you all the time,
cry your name into the sheets,
snapped under the weight of it, of all of it.
You keep touching my hair,
circles on my knees,
but I think I'm a distance
scuffed over and over onto the walls.
I can't bring myself to move.
Hazy nights again,
I don't know where I was, how I got here.
I wish I could kiss you quietly
with no avail, no consequence
or release,
but you touch my hands and I'm away again,
somewhere far away inside.
Raining all the time,
unstable, agitated,
it always keeps me close to you

Discarded memory pursues and abandons,
a sour scent falling
through an empty room.
Tired, unwanted, I rest within
grieving borders, edges crumpled
in agony. Pillows cradle heads,
and lights go dark to hide their shame.
Staring into the darkness of a blank
wall, I clench my jaw.

Forgotten, repressed, are the details
of what happened, swimming now
in viscous history. Yet still
the pressure, fear and betrayal,
bellow through with agony.
My tongue passes my lips
to taste familiar salinity,
I am blinded by red walls
and boxes on the floor.

Did I really lose an island?
A bloom of flowers?
I can recall a light, a youth,
something I had before.
But I am now
isolated, guarded and hostile.
The water is gone,
I am lost in the dry sand.

Sunday morning, dark and grey,
Coming home from December.
I can feel myself wasting away.
Look down, the skin is a mystery,
All I see is the history.
Too much history.
For a moment, I forgot.

The ******* the furthest right,
Skin too thin and preciously white,
She was in the hospital.
I want to be that way.
Six and half a dozen,
It was all a bit of nothing
Until my bones started breaking
For no reason,
No reason at all.

Stress.
Too far from home,
From what I know.
Not the hands touching me,
Every night from before I was ready,
The trauma in a bedroom
Hanging icy on the air.
A name on a label hanging hanging
Icy on the air.
Packaged hands waiting
Behind university doors,
Unknown,
Afraid.
A kind face telling me to come in
As I hesitate in the open door.
Do I remember the way,
Can I really run faster?

I don't see him anymore,
Not since summer.
We sat on the shore,
I almost hated him,
Hated myself instead.
It never takes long.
There must be something wrong
With me.
Went home to the city.
I didn't sleep.

I stared at her all night
before she came to speak to me.
No such thing as lost time.
I imagined what it would be like
to kiss her, and despite her anger
I knew she would come.
I didn't have the taste on my lips
but it filled my mouth the same way
it always did. She had her head
in her hands on the beach that day.
I couldn't stop staring.
Like a dream that is endless, relentless,
she laughs on the doorstep and waits
to be invited in. She walked me home,
held me close for a time,
but left me alone again.
Excitement clings, her bones strong
against every edge of memory,
every nerve and eyelid.
Every line on my hand follows
the curve of her thigh,
deafening and beautiful.
She makes me small and insignificant.
For a time, I was in love.

Everything is uncertain, and has been
for some time now. Panic on the air,
we rush across an empty city
in a daze, hoping we didn’t forget
the important things. I left
the freezer on. The taste
of dust in my mouth, I forget
what day it is, am consumed
by the stress of curfew, distance
and isolation.